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Why are there so many My Basket stores in the east Tama River area?
Any ideas why there's so man… In the east Tama River area, especially near Ota-ku and also on the other side of the river in Kawasaki, there seems to be an AEON My Basket store on almost every corner.
Any ideas why there's so many of them everywhere? Did another chain get bought out? I don't get how there can be so many near-identical stores so close to each other that turn a profit.
One thing nobody's mentioned is the delivery side. My Basket stores double as micro-fulfillment hubs for AEON's online grocery service, and the east Tama River corridor has a ton of two-income households in mansions along the Keikyu line who order via Green Beans rather than shop in person. That changes the math completely because a store that looks half empty at 3pm might be cranking out 200 delivery orders a day.
Also worth noting Ota-ku has been losing its shotengai at a decent clip, the ones around Kamata and Omori especially, so there's less competition from independent grocers than there was 15 years ago. My Basket slots into that vacuum almost by default.
My Basket is AEON's small-format brand and they've been opening them aggressively in exactly this kind of dense low-rise residential area, not really competing with a full supermarket but with konbini and drugstores. The catch is they need a very specific catchment, basically a 500m radius with enough foot traffic, so you end up with clusters along streets like Kannana or the Keikyu line corridors. They also tend to take over old pachinko parlors, banks, and small supermarkets that already had the right floor plate. tbh I don't think they all turn a profit on their own, AEON treats it more like a distribution and brand play than a per-store business.
honestly the density is partly a zoning thing, ota and kawasaki have tons of those yoto chiku 2 residential zones where you can slap a retail floor under apartments basically anywhere, so small grocers can pop up on random corners instead of being pushed to commercial-only strips. also my basket deliberately cannibalizes itself to keep seiyu and life out of the neighborhood, theyd rather have 3 of their own stores splitting the trade area than lose it to a rival
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Where can I find crispy, pan-fried bacon similar to a certain international style?
if u have a costco membership the kirkland thick cut is the move, 4 packs of 500g for around 2500 yen and it crisps up proper in a cold pan. for smaller runs, precce in azabudai hills & the basement at isetan shinjuku both carry imported US & danish brands in the chilled case, just read the label for "thick cut" or "smoked" and not "loin". also worth knowing japanese bacon is often wet-cured so pat it dry before frying or it steams instead of crisping
kaldi coffee farm is hit or miss but their smoked bacon from denmark shows up pretty regular, the 200g pack runs about 600 yen. what actually works better for me is asking the butcher counter at peacock or life to slice the block bacon thick, like 5mm, they do it for free and it crisps way better than the pre-packed stuff. also fwiw cheap bacon crisps faster, the fatty supermarket kind at 300 yen a pack works fine if u cook it from cold in a dry pan and pour off the fat as it renders.
tbh the gyomu super store brand bacon is surprisingly decent for crisping up, its not thick cut but if you cook it low and slow it gets pretty crunchy. the key is the dry cure vs wet cure thing, wet cure steams. also check hanamasa if you have one nearby, they sell big packs of american style bacon thats actually smoked and firm.